Throughout his piece he makes numerous exaggerated, inaccurate, and misleading statements. For example, this academic economist writes that I spend “several chapters discussing the scandalous fact that economists oppose any and all government intervention to protect the environment.” Even if that were my position, which it isn’t, I wouldn’t spend several chapters discussing it (especially since the book only has ten chapters).

Auld quotes me as saying that “senior economists are ‘part of a giant global conspiracy – an attempt to distract us from the real game that is being played behind the scenes.’ (I am not making this up.)” Actually, he is making that up: the full quote is a question, and the answer is negative. He leaves out the question mark.

Auld writes that “I don’t think there’s a single sentence about what economists believe in Economyths with which I agree.” But the book’s assertions are based on or backed by quotes and papers from economists, and the book has been endorsed by leading economists such as White, and Norbert Häring, and Thomas Sedlacek, to name a few.

Compare with e.g. this later one from January 2014 (all comments removed). This seems to be deliberate since all the other posts still have comments. Maybe it’s because Auld in a long exchange in the comments section proves himself utterly incapable of defending his position against a third-year economics student.

In one of those comments Auld accused me of being “full of venom and accusation” towards the “entire community of economists.” He meanwhile maintains a list of “anti-economists” on his site, who are described as vitriolic, spectacularly wrong, technically incompetent, butchering economics, etc. The list includes, besides me, the environmentalist David Suzuki, the economist Steve Keen, and the biologist David Sloan Wilson – all people from outside the mainstream economics establishment who have questioned the basic assumptions of economics.

In another post, Auld provides a list of “18 signs you’re reading bad criticism of economics” which includes everything from “Goes out of its way to point out that the Economics Nobel is not a real Nobel” (ref Nassim Taleb) to “Cites Debunking Economics” (ref Steve Keen). Taleb and Keen, together with White, are among the few people credited with giving advance warning of the financial crisis. Silence those voices, and what hope is there to predict the next one?